mikelyons

The LA market's broadcast of today's episode was interrupted three times. If anyone has the full episode, I'd love to see it...or I'll have to check CAA.

3 hours ago, All My Shadows said:

I'm mad because there was no iconic Rex/Katherine shot in the opening, but I'll live.

THIS is the Y&R everyone in my family was obsessed with and us kids grew up with. It just looks and sounds so perfect, and every character shown so far is important to the very fiber of the show's being. After only ten minutes, it's heartbreaking to think of how far this show has fallen.

Look at how beautiful and rich these location scenes with Dru and Neil are. No attempt to get fancy with film. Just straight videotape, and it's gorgeous. They knew it was a soap, and they were proud of it.

Dru and Neil - pure romance that isn't overblown and contrived. A laid-back couple basking in the glow of new wedded bliss.

 

And the perfectly understated Y&R music. Did I hear the old "Genoa City Theme" in that Brad/Ashley scene?

Classic Victor and Nicki angst. This episode has it all even with just a handful-and-a-half of characters.

That LUSH music coming to crescendo and then fading out as we hold on Nicki's tear-stained face for a silent beat - then fade to black. It's art, damn it.

Yep, that was the "Genoa City Theme". Such a great episode. 

Anything from 1973-78 would be most welcome. They could easily slot a half hour episode into their hour long slot without cutting a single word and having an actor pad the other two or three minutes of air time. 

13 hours ago, Aback said:

 

Thanks! I love to see how the actors sound in different languages. Those 2005 episodes were so bittersweet. Adrienne Leon and Davetta Sherwood... so many missed opportunities.

+1,000 You can say that again. I remember when they slightly toyed with giving Colleen an issue with food in a scene at Crimson Lights. It would have been a great story, but, ya know... 

1 hour ago, Gray Bunny said:

They should've made this announcement about 8 years ago, but... 

 

That's unfortunate

Amelia Heinle.

Jason Thompson.

Steve Burton.

Jacqueline McInness Wood. 

Alicia Minshew.

I always loved Doug and Leila’s friendship. It was unique, non sexual, and refreshing on soaps. Furthermore, I did enjoy the character even when he was written as a busybody fuddy-duddy. 

Y&R very nearly went to air with the title “The Young and Restless Years”. The original Screen Gems contracts have that name for show. Thank goodness someone lobbed off “Years”.  

3 hours ago, will81 said:

I was going to post this same thing.

 

Your hypocrisy is annoying. You gave some grief to that other poster who kept butting into threads and posting useless information no one cared about, now you are doing the same. If you have dish, share it with people who give a toss, it seems no one on this thread cares. 

This +1,000,000

4 hours ago, VanessaReardon said:

Come on! Lee wants a party!!! No doubt she’ll be kicking Bill in his nether regions, that cheated. It wasn’t a perfect marriage and she looked the other way so many times. Party on Lee. You deserve it. Kick Bill in the balls!!! 

Brenda Dickson, is this you?

3 hours ago, VanessaReardon said:

Not a shock. She was old. 

She was someone's mother, friend, confidant, grandmother... Loss is loss. Grow up.

AMC: The rape of Bianca Montgomery. That was when I turned off All My Children for good. It was ugly, vile, and unnecessary. 

OLTL: Jill Farren Phelps lands at One Life to Live. The show never recovered.

Y&R: Y&R was broken for me when Lynn Marie Latham came in and threw out the lighting grids, the music, the costumes, and flavor of the show. Coupled that with CBS' unending interference, it was a quick decline to the bottom on every front. 

All Soaps: Endless doppelgängers, baby switches, back from the dead stories, raping heroines for shock value, recycling awful writers and producers, hiring actors who can't act, and on and on and on... 

I do agree that reviews are what elevate a show to prestige level. The Crown has some of the best reviews around, while Grace and Frankie’s reviews are mixed at best. Which show is prestige?

All My Children was dead last in the ratings in 1971 or 1972, but they had fantastic praise and press from the industry and The NY Times. Same with Y&R. Soaps becoming socially relevant brought on their prestige, but also supercharged the race for ratings. 

If we could get to a place where ratings told a network how much they could charge for an ad again, we’d live in a very different TV universe. Everyone buys soap and toothpaste, not just women 18-49!

Let’s also remember that Downton Abbey originated on ITV, the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster. Ratings are a factor, but with Julian Fellowes writing and Maggie Smith in the cast, we all knew it would be something special. 

Sidebar: I worked at a talent agency when Mad Men was initially casting. We landed one of our clients on the show for the pilot and a few seasons, but NO ONE could understand why AMC, a movie channel and also-ran to TCM, was making a TV show. It feel a like a lifetime ago!

This is a great topic.

Here are my pithy thoughts on soaps as prestige television:

From the 30s thru the late-70s, the soaps were targeted towards women, but they were programming for anyone who wanted to watch it. They appealed to a wide audience which, in part, lead to their popularity. Small shows about real, yet heightened problems, provided an easy escape for its audience. All of that changed with Jacqueline Smith at ABC & her endless pursuit of the 18-49 demo. By chasing demos, you were trying to write for an audience which didn't exist with one outlandish stunt after another after another... With all of the soaps chasing demos, their quality - which had been high for many years! - suffered.

Prestige TV, by contrast, does not chase ratings. BBC, Hulu, Amazon Prime, PBS, HBO, Netflix, Showtime, etc. which have paved the way for what we consider prestige television do not subscribe to ratings, nor do they chase one viewer, they tend to cater to all and then those who stick around. They create, produce, and distribute the best show they can create with the resources at hand. They allow the creator, producer, and/or writer to execute their single, cohesive vision like soaps did before the mid-70s; nothing more, nothing less. Irna Phillips wrote ATWT her way without chasing demos and with the support of Benton & Bowles, P&G, and CBS for years and ATWT stayed Number One for 20 years. Bill Bell followed that template with Y&R; Julian Fellowes and David Chase did it in peak prestige television with DOWNTON ABBEY and THE SOPORANOS. 

When you start chasing ratings and demos every day, you'll never survive, your product will suffer, and there will be endless churn in your organization.

Thanks for all of these LOVING episodes! It was the little soap that could. We have to remember that the show had a different EP and head writer every year it was on the air! How the crew and cast managed to keep things going to this standard is remarkable. 

My guess would be that LOVING had a budget on the same scale as B&B did during the period, hence the quality. Both were sold overseas and extremely popular in Italy. Fremantle handled the international sales for LOVING (as well as PRICE IS RIGHT) while the Bells had B&B. This is a guess, but knowing they were each owned by their creators, not the network, and rented one studio from the network, they were probably well-funded due to their international sales in addition to their domestic licensing fees (aka budget).

I turned on Days the other day and was horrified. Did they fire their make-up department?? Everyone looked washed out and blotchy. 

SFT from August 19, 1953

Yikes. 

How long before DAYS hits a 0.99 in HH? They were at 1.05 on Wednesday. 

On 12/8/2019 at 6:31 AM, Faulkner said:

Oh that’s very sad to hear. It was mentioned here a year ago that she had to take time away from her role as supervising producer on Y&R for “a personal reason,” and Josh Griffith stepped in as a temporary replacement. 

 

 

Yes, I mentioned that. She had been ill for quite some time, but I didn't want to air her business on a message board. Everyone was hoping she would push through. This is very sad news. 

On 11/2/2019 at 9:54 AM, vetsoapfan said:

 

Yes, although he's not a blood Sugden, Andy and his kids are still alive to carry on the clan's legacy. And Sebastian could one day change his last name to Sugden, but preserving and reestablishing the family will take care and thought, which TPTB do not seem to have much of where the Sugdens are concerned.

 

To me, the vile Dingles are Emmerdales version of The Guiding Light's abrasive Shayme (I mean Shayne, LOL) family: a debilitating disease that infected a once-healthy show. UGH.

Agreed! And they keep MULTIPLYING!!! I turned off Emmerdale about a year and a half ago because of the Dingles.  I recently saw the news today that the actors playing Lisa, Bernice, Meghan, Graham, Robert, and a few more QUIT! I was shocked. What are they doing to Emmerdale?

Here are three images from script #828 of THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS written by William J. Bell and Kay Alden. I acquired this script online many years ago and have since sold it. I wanted to share these brief script snippets in case they're of interest to anyone. I can't remember if I scanned the whole script, but I'll take a look this weekend.

Enjoy!

If I remember correctly, WoST was the only site or resource to post a full video episode of WHERE THE HEART IS.  I’d kill

to see that episode in full. *sigh* Gotta love the Internet. 

3 hours ago, Khan said:

 

For me, as a longtime AMC fan, "Who Killed Will Cortlandt?" might have been the last time I felt like I was watching AMC, and not whatever ABC was trying to turn it into.

Agreed. After Disney bought ABC, the show never recovered. Remember Raquel, Braden, and the other one in that promo as the future of AMC? Awful.

On 6/29/2019 at 6:27 PM, Faulkner said:

 

I remember thinking James Patrick Stuart as Will Courtlandt on AMC was pretty unnerving as a kid growing up, but yikes at this scene.

 

Agreed. Will trying to rape Hayley was traumatic to watch as a kid, but I was engrossed in this storyline. "Who Killed Will?" is still one of my favorite soap opera storylines.

One thing I will say about the actors on Y&R and B&B from my time there is that they were very hardworking casts. They weren't in the concourse of CBS TV City fooling around or playing pranks on each other. These casts came to work, rehearsed their scripts in their dressing rooms with or without their scene partner(s), went to set, and performed. There were times you could sit on the stage to watch scenes unfold like a Broadway play. Sheer beauty. The Y&R and B&B sets were run very professionally, so if you hated your scene partner, you didn't bring that mess to set. You just didn't. But, yes, some actors took diva behavior very seriously, although it was rare.

Melody, for instance, had it known to the production office that NO ONE could knock on her dressing room door. You had to drop her scripts, etc. in her mailbox and come back later for the material. Susan Flannery, on the other hand, would belittle you for the sake of doing it because she could and you had no power. Which is worse? It's up for debate. However, ever since my encounters with Susan, I have disliked her and that, my message board friends, will never change. Especially when John McCook, Katherine Kelly Lang, and Ronn Moss were very professional and polite to those "beneath" them. (Side note: KKL was one of the few soap stars I met where I was like, "Oh my god. It's Brooke" even though B&B was never "my show".) (Second side note: Victoria Rowell's nickname for John McCook was/is "Cookie".)

Granted, my memories are from the late golden age of soaps, so maybe things have changed one way or another...